On first glance, the food the town of Cheddar seems most occupied with is ice-cream. Parlours, cafes and tea rooms line the outrageously postcardy main street, with an eccentric blizzard of flavours taking in blackberry and cream, cherry bakewell and Turkish delight. But of course it's not ice-cream that makes the name of this limestone-built, gorge-flanked Somerset village instantly recognisable - it's cheese.
Cheddar cheese is almost certainly the most consumed cheese in the world. In Australia, it accounts for about half of the cheese sold in the country. Yet many who merrily munch away on it won't realise it gets its name from a real place, 31 kilometres south-west of Bristol.
Those who do know the connection might think that Cheddar would be, ahem, cheesily devoted to flogging cheese. But it doesn't need to be - tourists have long flocked here for the natural wonders. The village sits at the base of Cheddar Gorge, a scything cleft through the Mendip Hills where chiselled rock walls tower up to 137 metres above the winding road.
The gorge is unsurprisingly popular with walkers and climbers, but it also conceals a network of history-packed caves.
The Museum of Prehistory tells the story of Cheddar Man, a skeleton discovered inside Gough's Cave in 1903. Dating back about 10,000 years, it's the oldest near-complete skeleton ever found in Britain and proof that people were poking around the caves for millennia before they became tourist attractions.
What could easily be a tedious museum exhibiting old stone tools is admirably expansive in scope and approach. Displays show how human beings have spread across the planet, while outdoors, there are live demonstrations of how cavemen made fire. Children become surprisingly engaged.
The show caves are the main attractions, however, with Gough's Cave the clear highlight. The Skeleton Pit, where Cheddar Man was discovered, is near the entrance. It's overshadowed by what's deeper inside, however. The cave is rich in natural decoration, with the cavern known as St Paul's Cathedral a masterpiece of rock columns and draping, slathering flowstone, bathed in a pink light. Solomon's Temple, meanwhile, feels like it comes from the Alien movies, with what looks like dripping fangs opening in the mouth of an eerily-smooth blob-like creature.
The most remarkable thing inside Gough's Cave, however, is man-made. Beneath an overhang are a series of giant shelving units, filled with truckles of cheese.
They belong to the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company, which was formed in 2003 with the aim of bringing cheese-making back to the village. Maturing the cheeses in Gough's Cave is a neat way of taking the story of cheddar back to where it started. Without these caves, there would be no cheddar cheese.
The history and geography intertwine. The first mention of cheddar cheese comes from 1170, but its reputation started to grow in the 15th century when the pastures around Cheddar became home to a thriving dairy industry.
The dairy farmers had a surplus of milk, and the ploy to avoid wastage was to turn it into cheese. Given that this was long before the era of temperature-controlled refrigeration, the caves provided the perfect place to store and mature the cheeses. They were humid, and the temperature was reliably consistent at 11 degrees Celsius - which was absolutely perfect for the maturation process.
A visit to the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company shows off another key element in cheddar's global success. While the shop at the front hosts tasting sessions, visitors are allowed to nip around the back to watch the cheeses being made in the factory. Arrive in the afternoon, and there's a good chance of watching the cheddaring in action.
Cheddaring is the process that gives cheddar cheese its distinct flavour and - crucially - its longevity. Viewing through the factory window, the huge chunks of curd look like blocks of sloppy sponge, but the workers cut them, turn them and stack them on top of each other. This squeezes the whey and moisture out of the blocks beneath. The less moisture, the less chance for microorganisms to grow inside the cheese, and the easier it is to transport long distances.
This is how the village of Cheddar became a victim of its own success. The British had a cheese that their colonists could take all over the world, and replicate the making of in their new colonies. Cheddar became the default, generic cheese, with extremely loose interpretations of what went into it, long before fancy concepts such as Protected Designation of Origin became fashionable.
The Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company is a small punch in a battle to reclaim a sense of place. In the shop, handing out chunks of marvellously sharp vintage cheddar, tours assistant Rose Nicholls explains why the cheese made in the village is different.
"We only use raw unpasteurised milk, from one farmer and his two herds of dairy cattle," she explains. "And all our cheese is made and cheddared by hand."
The local landscape has significant impact on the taste, too. "The lush pastures surrounding Cheddar that the cattle graze on really influence the milk," says Rose. "The soil and rocks around us are full of limestone, which contains many extra nutrients and minerals, all adding to the flavour and characteristics of our cheese."
It's a baby step towards putting the capital C back into Cheddar cheese. The cliff-flanked village that donated its most delicious invention to the world is regaining some local pride.
The writer was a guest of Visit Britain